Móði

Summary

Móði is a son of Thor in the Scandinavian myths and the brother of Magni. The sources do not name his mother and tell no adventure of his in his father's lifetime, yet he appears at the most important point in the myths: after the end of the world. In Vafþrúðnismál Odin asks the wise giant which of the gods will hold the gods' domain when Surtr's fire dies down. The answer: Víðarr and Váli will dwell in the gods' sanctuaries, and Móði and Magni will have Mjöllnir when Thor falls in battle.

His story is his father's story told from its end. At Ragnarök the world serpent Jörmungandr comes out of the sea, and Thor goes out against it and kills it "in wrath", as Völuspá says, then walks nine steps and falls dead from its venom. When the earth rises green out of the sea and the fields grow unsown, Thor's sons Móði and Magni come to Iðavöllr, where Asgard once stood, bringing the hammer, and sit with Víðarr and Váli, and with Baldr and Höðr returned from Hel, remembering the serpent and the wolf.

The idea the story turns on is that Thor leaves his hammer to two sons whose names are words for what he is. Old Norse móðr is surging wrath and megin is might, and the poems use both words of Thor himself. When the gods broke their oaths to the giant builder, "Thor alone struck there, swollen with wrath"; when he meets the serpent at the end of time, "in wrath he slays"; and when he saw the fear of the household whose son had broken his goat's bone, "the wrath left him" and he grew calm. He also owns the belt of might, which increases his divine strength by half when he buckles it on. The two sons carry Thor's wrath and Thor's might into the new world: Thor dies, and what made him Thor remains.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method. The final i of Móði is the nominative ending of a weak masculine noun, the genitive being Móða, which leaves móð-: m, a long vowel, then ð. The essay reads it with the letters m, d and y as madā, the utmost limit and reach of a thing. The same three letters in the order of the Norse name, m, then y, then d, give māda, which Lane gives as "it was in a state of motion, or commotion; was agitated; or violently agitated". That is the sense of the Norse word: wrath surging in the breast. On this reading Móði is the agitated, surging one, Thor's wrath inheriting the hammer; on the essay's reading he is his father's reach, the extent by which Thor goes on beyond his death.

Linguistic Root

Móði and māda

Cleasby–Vigfusson define móðr as wrath, quoting Völuspá on Thor "swollen with wrath" and Snorri's sentence that the wrath left him when he saw the household's fear, and they list the compound Ás-móðr, "the godly wrath of Thor". A second sense is moodiness, heart's grief. Orel gives the Germanic source as *mōđaz, with Gothic mōþs, anger, and English mood, and says it probably continues a form meaning "moved", like Latin mōtus from moveō, "I move".

Lane, under m-y-d: māda, yamīdu, "it was in a state of motion, or commotion; was agitated; or violently agitated", as in the Qur'anic "lest it (the earth) be convulsed with you". Māda also means to be confounded and perplexed, and māda bihi al-baḥr is to be made giddy by the sea. From the root comes maydān, the ground for racing and fighting.

The comparison keeps m first, puts y where the long vowel stands, and d where the Norse ð stands. The ð of móð- is the Germanic d between vowels, written þ at the end of the Gothic word, and the Juthoor laws group d, dh, t and ṭ together at t and d. One thing remains: Norse ó is a rounded vowel, which Arabic y answers only as a glide, and Lane has no separate root m-w-d with this sense.

The essay's readings

The essay reads the name as mawadda, affection, or madā, reach. Mawadda comes from the root w-d-d, and its m belongs to the noun pattern, not the root, whereas the m of móð- is a root letter, and affection is far from wrath. Madā in Lane is the utmost extent, limit or reach of a thing, a distance travelled to a goal, and it keeps m and d in order. It suits Móði's place in the story: he is what remains of Thor after the end of time. The essay calls affection "what continues and is handed down between generations".

Key Mythic Narratives

Móði's father

Hymiskviða calls Thor "Móði's father" at the close of his adventure with the giant Hymir: he gripped the great cauldron by the rim, his feet went through the floor of the hall, and he lifted it onto his head with its rings clanging at his heels. Snorri lists among Thor's titles "father of Magni and Móði and Þrúðr".

Two wraths in the last battle

Völuspá puts wrath on both sides: the serpent writhes "in giant-wrath" and lashes the waves, and Thor kills it "in wrath". Snorri says the same: the sea surges over the land because the serpent turns in giant-wrath and makes for the shore. When both wraths are dead, Móði remains, and his name is the same word.

Symbolic Reading

The Semitic-reading essay makes Móði an image of the father's strength and affection continuing into the next generation. The Norse rereading essay reads the green earth rising after Ragnarök as spring returning after the longest winter, and the two sons who carry the hammer into that land belong to the return. The texts themselves do not say what the sons do with the hammer, only that it is theirs.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

In the story of Zeus the father fears the son: Kronos swallows his children because he has been told that one of them will take his rule, and Zeus takes it from him by war. Thor's sons take nothing from their father in his lifetime; the hammer passes to them after he dies defending the world. In the Greek story inheritance is seizure; in the Norse story it is a handing-on after death. Coming out of the end of time with Móði are two other sons of Odin, Víðarr and Váli, each of whom avenged a father or a brother.